#Poetry

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daring quartz
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i started watching these and can confirm, they are amazing - he's really encouraging to beginners (and does give some more formal poetic analysis which is more of an extra than necessary to fully grasp) #1059881951542116462 message

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also, i guess it's too late to do it now, but given how Spenser's The Faerie Queene seems to be mentioned as an important precedent to Paradise Lost, I wish I'd started that first (I was debating which of the two poetic classics to read first and chose PL.

did notice that a lot of the works going for the #ancient-classics event are really useful to have read:

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specifically Homer's Odyssey & Iliad, Virgil's Aeneid, Dante's Divine Comedy, Ovid's Metamorphoses. Having recently read them has also helped me be a lot less lost!

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one last thought, re. bk. 2 ||the genealogy is wild?! Sin is Satan's consort who was birthed from his head, and their offspring is Death - who then commits sexual violence upon his mother and she gives birth to hellhounds. I guess 'son of Satan' truly is an insult of the highest order.||

little shard
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it's a lot closer to the pastoral and allegoricals and to some degree the romances with the knights which dominated in the mediaeval period

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I found it, personally, less epic-like and less fun than PL

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I guess it's like Thomas Kyd, slightly, for me?

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important for his influence on Shakespeare, but definitely felt more lopsided, a less polished and skilled antecedent

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checking him out later did give me some appreciation for Shakespeare's mastery of the craft, and I don't really know how much I would've gotten if I'd done it the other way 'round

little shard
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though he did aim to set himself apart from the usual epic tradition in some ways

daring quartz
daring quartz
little shard
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I do gotta say, John Donne is one of my favourite poets I've had the pleasure of reading of recent

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exactly the kind of witty little bastard I love

little shard
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I've had Inferno sitting on my shelf since some time last year

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it's a really nice edition, with Dore's engravings, too

daring quartz
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Paradise Lost bk. 3 ||holy sheeeet, did Uriel just reveal Eden's location to Satan?! I didn't realise the angels can't tell who are false angels and not: 'For neither man nor angel can discern / Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks / Invisible except to God alone' is how i'm interpreting why? though it is pretty cool that Uriel was there at the beginning of Earth's creation.||

daring quartz
little shard
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oh, translations to English, right?

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curious what you think about them, I've never familiarised myself with those

daring quartz
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one of my closest friends was reading Donne recently and really enjoyed how witty and catty Donne was 🤣

little shard
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ah, yeah, music really starts picking up throughout the Renaissance

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Baroque stuff I really like

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with its ornamentation

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in music, in ltierature, in architecture

daring quartz
little shard
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ooh!

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until when is it up?

daring quartz
little shard
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I'm currently preparing for my graduation exam and I'm utterly drowned in work, but I should be free starting after

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oh, 'til the end of the year, looks like

daring quartz
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no pressure, totally understand! it's there if you're interested and when you're able 🙂

little shard
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okay, I might join later!

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gosh, I do wanna do everything and read everything and agh

daring quartz
daring quartz
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guess i am reading Spenser as my next big poetic classic: https://www.openculture.com/spenser_and_milton_free_course

Open Culture
OC
Spenser and Milton (Free Course)

Taught by William Flesch at Brandeis University, Spenser and Milton are the two greatest non-dramatic English poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and they even rival Shakespeare.  Shakespeare read (and adopted) Spenser; Milton read and used Spenser as a way to think about poetic, aesthetic, religious and political issues in a non...

little shard
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Spenser's great I do like him

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way more bitey than Sidney

daring quartz
high mist
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Is This May Final Form by Amy Gerstler was a library recommended book and it was very good. The 10 minute play was okay but the poetry was very poignant, especially to me with the themes of aging and remembering people and events from the past. As Winter Sets In was my favourite poem. I liked that in the back the poet gave context to some of her poems. I always appreciate knowing where the poet is coming from when reading a poem.

daring quartz
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came across this in another server - how Milton's poetry might've been pronounced in his lifetime: https://mastodon.social/@azforeman/109589013905224160

A.Z. Foreman (@[email protected])

What if you performed Milton's Paradise Lost as an audiobook in a reconstruction of mid-17th century pronunciation?

Answer: this, video maybe? (This is the first 150 or so lines)

I gave Satan a very conservative accent with a low MATE vowel, while Beelzebub maintains a TALE-TAIL distinction as /ɛ: ɛi/

Next tweet contains another excerpt...

@linguistics
@histodons

▶ Play video
Mastodon ·
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almost halfway through the Paradise Lost and bless my copy's glossary, it's been fun learning about the angels, the different ranks of them, and how their names often mean something.

It's sometimes a bit confusing how the poem will shift from the poet narrating, to others talking, but also seeing who speaks next is exciting.

(my reward for finishing reading this is i get to queue up a rewatch of Supernatural 🤣 )

daring quartz
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just finished bk. 6 of Paradise Lost and ||shit just got real! there is something comical about trying to imagine angels charging at each other mid-flight. I guess I wasn't expecting their warfare to be so visceral in description, but really enjoyed it, am loving the process of reading this work immensely.

I remember struggling with this in #1340674248573714483 too, but sometimes I lose track of who is narrating, or who is speaking to whom, especially when Raphael narrating all of this action (and dialogue of others) to Adam (which has to be altered so that mortals can comprehend the actual events of the battle and its participants). It's also tricky keeping track of which angels are doing/saying what etc. and to/with whom.||

daring quartz
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halfway through bk 9 ||and shit's about to go down in Eden! really been enjoying the dialogues leading up to this (between Raphael and Adam, and between Adam and Eve). Interesting that the serpent was singled out by Satan to be his mouthpiece to bring about the Fall, and also been enjoying how classical mythology creation myths are interwoven with the biblical Judeo-Christian creation stories though i can imagine reading this would be so much harder if you weren't familiar with any of these stories/myths/traditions.||

tired falcon
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"Eve's Diary" by Mark Twain is also pretty good. Might be fun to compare

daring quartz
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bk. 10 ln 773-5 ||(Adam) '...Why do I overlive? / Why am I mocked with death and lengthened out / to deathless pain?'|| same, bruv, same! dude spilling facts. such a poetic way to be dramatic 🤣

daring quartz
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the orders and hierarchies of angels is both fascinating and deeply confusing to keep track of

daring quartz
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and finished! feels like bk. 11 & 12 were a lot of New Testament retelling and regurgitating, and ||Michael patiently answering a lot of Adam's questions - totally fair/valid to have so many!||

daring quartz
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huzzah! have finished all the extra stuff for Paradise Lost- the glossary in my edition was phenomenal - there were so many place names which if i hadn't looked up, so much of the poem would have gone over my head, but quite honestly, annotating while i read just made reading it such an enjoyable experience - not everyone's idea of fun but it's going to have a very fond space in my life for a good while!

manic brook
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I have similar experiences when reading Dante's Inferno. the texts are so rich, there are so many puzzles need to be solved and references to be looked up. In Inferno, it's people's names. Half of the time I was looking at interpreter's notes/annotations, because it tells why this person was sent to this circle(?), what he had done in his life time.

daring quartz
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I swear part of the reason Dante wrote The Divine Comedy was to have an excuse to have a Mean Girls-eque 'burn book' 🤣

manic brook
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ahhh sry I don't understand.. mean girls... what?

daring quartz
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it's a film - a clique of high school girls have a book where they write horrible things about classmates they don't like and they call it the 'burn book'

manic brook
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i see now. 🤭

daring quartz
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i was just watching something where they did a flashback to a time and place where Milton was alive and the show was talking about Newtonian discovery of light into its spectrum when shone into glass and my first thought was "wait, that can't be right because Milton was alive then and if Newton was discovering shit, then Milton would've been all over that shit in his writing?!" and yes, Newton was 2 yrs old at the time period that part of the show was set in kekCry

apparently i learnt a lot from reading Paradise Lost

daring quartz
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i've queued collections i'm least looking forward to reading for the next week or so and the first two collections i've read have been pretty lacklustre.

little shard
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what've ya picked?

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I have to say, this looks neat but I've my reservations about it

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poetry's a dense genre that benefits from lingering

daring quartz
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a lot of it is mainly contemporary Australian poetry...a fair amount of it is sadly not going to be great which is why i've procrastinated reading it

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but yeah, if anything needs more than a day, i'm not going to try and cram it into an entire day just for a challenge, that isn't really thoughtful or mindful reading

little shard
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I've been reading the Duino Elegies, on a similar note

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mostly in the original, though juggling a couple of translations

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from the ones I've read in English, the publicly available one by A. S. Klein js actually not half bad and follows the original pretty closely

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the bilingual Vintage edition I have is also not half-bad

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however, I cannot, for the life of me, find a good translation into my native tongue

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so I've been translating along with it all

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I'm doing one final reread of 1-9 as buildup for the grand finale of the last Elegy

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intensely, immensely beautiful

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I think reading even just one a day sates me

daring quartz
little shard
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Bulgarian!

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but yeah, I really like the Duino Elegies

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absolutely a work you have to let seep in

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the metaphors and imagery, the melancholy

little shard
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finished the Duino Elegies

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I think I, uh

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I think I don't need to read poetry again

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I think this was it

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I don't know why anyone has even tried writing poetry after Rilke already wrote the Duino Elegies

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pastime time-killing, I'd presume

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I don't think there's any need to really write anything anymore

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or read anything anymore

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or do anything anymore

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I think I would rather dissolve into text

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get thin, thin, thin enough to slip in-between linnen-like lines of text

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live in there now

daring quartz
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came across this whilst reading #1372844095554453505 https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50579/the-ladys-dressing-room

i nearly died at the bit where he describes sebaceous filaments, good to know folks back then worried about blackheads too kekCry

The Poetry Foundation
The Lady’s Dressing Room

Strephon, who found the room was void, And Betty otherwise employed, Stole in, and took a strict survey, Of all the litter as it lay; Whereof, to make the matter clear, An inventory follows here. Strephon, the rogue, displayed it wide, And turned it round on every side. On such a point few words…

daring quartz
pale heath
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Anyone interested in Ben Lerner’s Poetry?

daring quartz
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it is readable but it’s challenging:

6CEAFAA8-EB50-4B07-B850-51AA85D938C7.jpg
daring quartz
lethal bobcat
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reads like code to me

pale heath
daring quartz
lethal bobcat
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middle-angel?

daring quartz
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the premise of the work is really cool but a bit brain-hurty 🤣

lethal bobcat
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interesting... if i knew people thought code was poetic, i'd just write them some brainfuck or worse, javascript. kekCry

pale heath
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[+saccharineOFF] 👌

daring quartz
lethal bobcat
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ah interesting, the root looks like mezo or mezzo so i thought middle/intermediate

daring quartz
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i mean tbh that could be included in the wordplay, given what this artist is going for

little shard
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very cummings influenced

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I really enjoy this forcing multiple words out of one

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I've done it a bit in my own writing

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Arno Schmidt does it a lot, from what I've seen

daring quartz
tall stirrup
tall stirrup
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my sealey reads so far:

  1. meadowlands by louise gluck
  2. citizen illegal by jose olivarez
  3. something abt living by lena khalaf tuffaha
  4. the moon that turns you back by hala alyan
  5. if they come for us by fatimah asghar
  6. american sonnets for my past and future assassin by terrance hayes
  7. the gospel of breaking by jillian christmas
  8. couplets by maggie milner (in progress)
daring quartz
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so i'm admittedly using the Sealey challenge to get through some contemporary Australian poetry books which i've not accumulated willingly and so far there's only been one book which has been a super-stand-out

daring quartz
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but i am looking forward to doing this in the future with poetry i really want to read

daring quartz
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finally, a Sealey read i would recommend to anyone interested in contemporary/academic-type poetry - Susan Howe's Sorting Facts: or, Nineteen Ways of Looking at Marker

little shard
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ooooh?

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what's made it stand out?

daring quartz
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it's really creative non-fictive essay but the language and the way it discusses or ties into other artforms and history is just breathtaking. i haven't finished it just yet (because i don't want to rush it despite its brevity) but it does make me want to look up a lot of the works it discusses. it doesn't feel like they're mentioned to show off how learned the writer is, it feels heartfelt?

little shard
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oh, wait, I've read a work by Susan Howe!

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she was featured in a collection on contemporary poetry (from the 90s?, early oughts? I think?), with a text on Dickinson

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yeah, do gotta check that out later

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some of the works mentioned in that collection were also pretty interesting-looking

daring quartz
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you might also enjoy that series - the New Directions Poetry Pamplet series, i got two sets of four but it looks like you can get them separately now

little shard
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I'm a big fan of Dickinson, I should check this out

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also given that I have to be writing a text on her

tired falcon
daring quartz
tall stirrup
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i think i made it 12 days into sealey and then my brain was just like no

daring quartz
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i am hating it so much but feel like i've come too far to dump it

cinder sundialBOT
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i am hating it
so much but feel like i've come
too far to dump it

- mxpixieears
daring quartz
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fitting, that Haikubot should turn that into poetry

daring quartz
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okay, maybe it was easier to hate-read, now that i've got to choose between volumes i want to enjoy, i'm struggling?! kekCry

little shard
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told yaaaaa

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good poetry wants you to linger on it

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sit and chew and smile and think and feel!

daring quartz
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started a poetry volume of work by Thomas Chatterton, and damn, what an interesting person! wrote poetry which he pretended was medieval and by a poet he made up and somehow corresponded with Horace Walpole about it?!

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he also seemed to piss off a lot of people, or have people pissed off at him

daring quartz
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his 'forged' work is really good, even though it's pretty much a rip off of Chaucer and Shakespeare

daring quartz
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now i'm reading a verse novel about parkour which sounds like an amazing premise, but it's just...okay

pale heath
daring quartz
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sure thing, it's called Run by Tim Sinclair - pic incoming

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i'm rooting so hard for the concept but for the most part, the poetry is pretty clunky

pale heath
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TYVM.
It reads like it might be better as one of those “self made vibe” animated short films.

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If you’ve got great moving images the narration ain’t primordial…

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Sweet concept though!

daring quartz
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interestingly enough, the book has a video trailer for it by the publisher! it's really good, you're totally right

pale heath
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Thanks for the link! The trailer looks fun, indeed. However, a bit odd for a trailer advertising a book to pretty much not include any text, apart from a handful of drawn words such as “run”, stepping stone” and the like.
But then… looking at the pic you sent, it’s seems like an accurate representation. 😁

little shard
daring quartz
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here’s another cool page - i think this was more what i was expecting throughout as it’s the walls of text as poetry that are clunky

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it has the opportunity to be really playful and muck around with language to mimic the movement of parkour and just doesn't, really (in aforementioned walls of text)

karmic fable
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Oooo that’s really cool formatting

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I love poems that do that kinda stuff, it can really enhance things when done well

daring quartz
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and it could've done so much more of it too, to mimic how dynamic and active parkour is (the major interest of the main character), though i guess the plot jumps around a lot - it's got a convoluted way of actually telling the story

karmic fable
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aw man frogscream then it goes from cool and creative to gimmicky

daring quartz
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it was cringe-inducing

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but it's over, at last

daring quartz
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on last book of the Sealey challenge! even though i know i did it for fun, it made reading feel like such a chore

tall stirrup
daring quartz
tall stirrup
daring quartz
# tall stirrup

drool! some heavyweights there i see 😍

i have a volume of Atwood's poetry which i've yet to read - Eating Fire, was hoping to get to it this year

tall stirrup
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czesław miłosz is such a traumatized bebe oh my lord 🥺

manic brook
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found a TED-ed video about Rumi:
https://youtu.be/MNw9x53Ybos?si=7uFQ9PMFMlhOLm20
I think I will try to read him after finishing my current BR

YouTube
TED-Ed
How to love, according to Rumi - Stephanie Honchell Smith

Explore the life and works of Rumi, who became one of the world’s most celebrated poets and mystical philosophers.

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According to legend, the renowned scholar Jalaluddin Muhammad Rumi was giving a lecture when a disheveled man approached and asked him the meaning of his academic books. Rumi didn’t know it yet, but this question and this m...

▶ Play video
daring quartz
daring quartz
manic brook
# daring quartz i was surprised by how modern the authorial voice in the poems sounded! in a goo...

Yeah, i like how it sounded. But I am also thinking the translator makes big differences here? I've placed a library hold of a copy translated by Coleman Barks. He seems a promising translator accordingto the blurb. I am curious about how his translation is like.
https://www.harperacademic.com/book/9780061753398/rumi-bridge-to-the-soul/

Harper Academic
SupaduDev
Rumi: Bridge to the Soul - Coleman Barks

Originally released in 2007, "Year of Rumi," to coincide with the poet's 800th birthday, by the pre-eminent Rumi poet Coleman Barks. In Rumi: Bridge to the S...

daring quartz
manic brook
hearty sentinel
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Poem from a bookstore in Vancouver

F6B47A93-845F-4DBB-99E6-781A293DDD96.jpg
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I really liked it

finite charm
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Omg Audre Lorde pepemegaSUCC

hearty sentinel
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I’ve never heard of her

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Him?

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Her, quick google. Sounds like a cool person

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I loved the poem because I instantly understood it. Words can be like that, they can inspire all of those feelings.

daring quartz
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it's not poetry but essays, but highly recommend her work Sister Outsider

grand trellis
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this one seems kinda dead . but hi everyone . i'm looking for autumnal poetry book recs !!

little shard
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full books that fit the mood of autumn?

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that'd be a bit harder

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though I'm also curious to hear what others have to say, now

little shard
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I have to say, R.D. Laing's Knots has to be my favourite book of poetry I've read of recent

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it's a seriws of explications of those mental exercises of flawed logic people go through to stick to certain relationships or not allow themselves to feel certain ways

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and they're a pain to disentangle or keep track of and it's amazing

tired falcon
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Haiku bot likes it, apparently

hybrid wadi
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Been reading a translation of Catullus the past few weeks

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spicy lmao

little shard
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oh, catullus is great

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his non-biting stuff is also p cute sometimes

hybrid wadi
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yeah! i’m reading ‘Poems of Love and Hate’

little shard
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Odi et amo. Quare id faciam fortasse requiris is amazing

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I read it in my native tongue, which is, luckily, much closer to greek than english is, in terms of morphosyntax, but the notes at the back did still point out how hard it is to render a text that is almost entirely verbs, whilst retaining both the effect and sense of it

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though my personal favourite probably is the one dedicated to his brother, after which Anne Carson writes her Nox

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(Nox is probably a big reason I adore it so)

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also the two to do with kisses!

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one of the first poems I shared with my now-partner!

daring quartz
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I can't find my copy of Nox and it's driving me nuts, I actually want to read it again 😭

little shard
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oh, I'm so so sorry to hear!

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it's genuinely among my favourite works, just... in general

cinder sundialBOT
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it's genuinely
among my favourite works,
just... in general

- WolfDaysPapers (#1 1984 Hater)
real pier
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Another Birth (Tavallodī Dīgar) — Forough Farrokhzad, trans. by Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr.

My whole being is a dark verse
that by repeating you in itself
will carry you to the dawn of eternal blossoming and growth
In this verse I sighed you
ah, in this verse
I grafted you to tree and water and fire

◊◊

Maybe life
is a long street in which every day a woman with a basket passes by
Maybe life
is a rope with which a man hangs himself from a branch
Maybe life is a young child coming home from school

Maybe life is lighting a cigarette in the languid pause between making
love and making love again
or the distracted gait of a passer-by
who lifts his hat from his head
and with a meaningless smile says to another passer-by, “Good morning”

Maybe life is that enclosed moment
in which my gaze annihilates itself in the pupils of your eyes
and in this there is a feeling that I will mix
with the moon’s understanding and the acceptance of darkness

In a room the size of a loneliness
my heart
the size of a love
looks for simple excuses for happiness
to the beautiful wilting of the flowers in the vase
to the sapling you planted in the garden of our house
and to the song of the canaries
who sing the size of a window

Ah . . .
This is my lot
This is my lot
My lot
is a sky that the pulling of a curtain takes away from me
My lot is to descend an abandoned stairway
and join something rotting and in exile
My lot is a walk stained with grief in the garden of memories
and to die grieving for the voice that says to me
“I love
your hands”

I bury my hands in the garden
I will grow, I know, I know, I know
and swallows will lay their eggs
in the hollow of my ink-stained fingers

I hang twin red cherries
over my ears as earrings
and stick dahlia petals on my fingernails
There is an alleyway where
the boys who were in love with me
with the same tousled hair and skinny necks and spindly legs
are still thinking of the innocent smiles of a girl who was carried away
one night
by the wind

There is an alleyway that my heart
has stolen from the neighborhoods of my youth

The journey of a form along the line of time
a form impregnating the barren line of time
a form conscious of an image
that returns from a feast in a mirror

And thus it is
that someone dies
and someone remains

◊◊

No fisherman will find a pearl in the humble stream that pours into a pit

I
know a sad little fairy
who lives in an ocean
and plays her heart out softly, softly
on a pennywhistle
a sad little fairy
who dies with a kiss at night
and is born with a kiss at dawn

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From the great Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad who garnered controversy through her open engagement with themes of feminine desire and existential longing. She died at the age of 32 in a car accident, yet her poetry remains some of the most transformative of 20th Century Persian literature

real pier
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夜もすがら水鶏よりけに鳴く鳴くぞ
真木の戸口に叩きわびつる

yomosugara
kuina yori keni
naku naku zo
maki no toguchi ni
tataki wabitsuru

all night long
cries the water rail, but even more
did I weep and weep again
at your cedar door
I knocked, but found only grief!

— Murasaki Shikibu
manic brook
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Oneness

There's something dense, united, sitting in the
background,
repeating its number, its identical signal.
How clear it is that stones have handled time,
in their fine substance there's the smell of age,
and water the sea brings, slaty and sleepy.

Just one thing surrounds me, a single motion:
the weight of rocks, the light of honey,
fasten themselves to the sound of the word night:
the tone of wheat, of ivory, of tears,
aging, fading, blurring,
come together around me like a wall.

I toil deafly, circling above my self,
like a raven above death, grief's raven.
I'm thinking, isolated in the depths of the seasons,
dead center, surrounded by silent geography:
a piece of weather falls from the sky,
an extreme empire of confused unities
converges, encircling me.

 -- Pablo Neruda
real pier
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short little poem i wrote out on a walk yesterday:

above the chilled fleece of snow
the lone skylark’s song:
melting off branches
like swandew tears
her voice lifting
as the damp of leaves re-compose me

hybrid wadi
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don’t think i’ve read any work by someone i have an emoji of before

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‘Listening to a Pogrom on the Radio’ by Michael Rosen, more famous for his children’s poetry but this is aimed at adults

little shard
tired falcon
manic brook
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sing Rumi's poem with music
https://youtu.be/eV5aH1D6X6E?si=juLQ5xsTDR81mx24

YouTube
Poetry for Heart
Rumi: The Poem That God Whispered to Rumi (Sufi Poetry & Music)

✨ [This is not just poetry; it is a divine transmission. Listen closely as Rumi becomes the vessel for the Creator's voice, reminding us that we belong to the Ocean, not the dry land. Imagine God speaking directly to your soul through Rumi's words.]

—

"Didn't I tell you? Do not go there, for I am your friend..."

In this video, experience ...

▶ Play video
daring quartz
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TIL about 'the golden shovel' - where the word at the end of each poetic line makes up a new poem - an example: Terrance Hayes' 'The Golden Shovel' forms Gwendolyn Brooks' 'We Real Cool' - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55678/the-golden-shovel

The Poetry Foundation
The Golden Shovel

Standing in the middle of the street last night we watched the moonlit lawns and a neighbor strike his son in the face. A shadow knocked straight Da…

daring quartz
karmic fable
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Omg